Serbian-American Téa Obreht has won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction for her debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife (Random House, 2011). At 25, she is the youngest ever to be awarded the Prize.
The Orange Prize, now celebrating its 16th year, “celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing throughout the world.” The Prize winner receives £30,000 and the “Bessie,” a bronze figurine, both anonymously endowed.
Obreht’s novel weaves together magical stories of the Balkan narrator’s grandfather in a war-torn land. Bettany Hughes, Chair of Judges, said Obreht “has managed to bring the tragedy of the chronic Balkan conflict thumping into our front rooms with bittersweet vivacity.”
Short-listed for the prize were: Emma Donoghue for Room; Aminatta Forna for The Memory of Love; Emma Henderson for Grace Williams Says it Loud; Nicole Krauss for Great House; and Kathleen Winter for Annabel, recently reviewed by Her Circle contributor Val B. Russell.
Lourdes Acevedo
Formerly an attorney representing domestic violence survivors, Lourdes E. Acevedo is a writer and poet of Mexican and English descent interested in art in furtherance of gender and social justice. She holds a J.D. from UC Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law and got her starting writing with the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law and Justice and the California Law Review. She is currently at work on a novel based on her experiences as an attorney, as well as a chapbook of poems. Connect with Lourdes on her new blog: http://lourdesacevedo.wordpress.com
The win for Ms. Obreht was an interesting turn of events. The runner-ups were wonderful and deserving authors as well as their books. Téa Obreht and her book, “The Tiger’s Wife”, has a very auspicious beginning with this prize for such a young writer. It was an excellent choice and it will be interesting to see how her writing career progresses.